The Attendee Cost System – Stop Planning Like a Fan and Start Thinking Like an Organizer

Too many conventions are built on vibes alone. Your dream team of cohorts gets together in a group chat or discord channel. Suddenly, someone says “You know what would be cool?”—and before long, thousands of dollars are poured into this new idea of a convention in your area. After a year of planning, the con happens not with a bang, but a whimper. 

Sound familiar?

It’s not that your passion is the problem. It’s that passion without structure leads to bloated budgets, under-attended panels, and a burned-out board that bickers (Or worse, a con organizer that starts doubling down). If you’re serious about growing your event and delivering real value to your community, you can’t afford to just plan for what’s “cool”. You need to plan for what is going to bring in attendees!

That’s where the Attendee Cost System comes in. We designed this framework to shift the conversation from “What do we want?” to “What will our attendees actually use, enjoy, and pay for?” It gives convention organizers a practical way to align passion with performance—and make sure every dollar spent works harder.

What Is the Attendee Cost System?

The Attendee Cost System (ACS) is a budgeting and programming framework designed to help convention organizers make smarter, more transparent decisions about how they allocate their resources. At its core, ACS asks a simple but powerful question: “How much does each activity, panel, or feature actually cost per attendee?”

Instead of just looking at the raw budget or guessing what people want, ACS puts the focus on return on investment—from the perspective of both the organizer and the attendee. It encourages convention teams to ask:

• Is this feature worth it, based on how many people it serves?
• Does this guest, event, or vendor offering justify its cost per head?
• Are we offering enough to justify what attendees are paying to be here?

By breaking things down into cost-per-attendee metrics, organizers can:

• Build programming that delivers more value.
• Cut unnecessary or bloated expenses.
• Communicate more clearly with sponsors and partners.
• Justify ticket pricing with data—not assumptions and insecurity.

Why Most Conventions Miss the Mark (And How ACS Fixes It)

Most conventions don’t fail because they lack enthusiasm—they fail because they lack structure. Organizers often focus on the flashiest or most nostalgic programming ideas instead of asking, “Will this move the needle?” You’ll see cons blow $5,000 on a celebrity meet-and-greet that only attracts 40 people, while skipping basic investments like crowd control, vendor support, or accessible programming that would have impacted hundreds more attendees.

The problem is that many con teams don’t track cost per attendee, so they don’t see how their budget is stretched thin by low-impact features. They focus on what they personally want to see, instead of what their broader audience will actually show up for. That’s where the Attendee Cost System changes the game.

Using ACS gives you the tools to:

• Map every major cost to attendee reach.
• Eliminate guesswork from panel scheduling, entertainment, and guest invites.
• Focus your time and money on programming that brings in foot traffic, vendor sales, and repeat ticket buyers.
• It doesn’t kill creativity—it makes sure your creativity pays off.

Your Budget Isn’t Broken, but Your Priorities Might Be

Let’s be real: most conventions don’t fail because they didn’t try hard enough. They fail because they planned based on personal hype instead of audience value. How many times have you been to an event where a panel has been empty? How many times have you been to an event you looked at and said “nah, I’ve seen the guests before”. If your planning meetings start with “Wouldn’t it be awesome if…” and not “What does our audience actually want—and what’s it worth to them?” then you’re setting your budget on fire before the first badge prints.

You don’t need more hustle, you need smarter structure.

You need a system that helps you prove value, defend your decisions, and cut the fluff without killing the fun. That’s exactly what the Attendee Cost System is built to do. It’s time to stop guessing what people want. It’s time to know—and back it with numbers. When you start seeing your programming as an investment in your attendees, you start building an event that will grow.

Breaking Down the Attendee Cost System (ACS)

A step-by-step framework to help you stop winging it—and start winning it.

For the sake of following along, we are going to create our own con for this exercise. 
You are now the new con chair for RANDOMCON; a three day show that has occurred the last five years to moderate success. Your board voted you in as the new board chair, and now you want to change a few things up. To start, you want to bring in a local cosplayer as a guest for your show. You want them to have three panels (one per day) at your event along with cosplay contest pre-judging and judging. 

Step 1: Identify Your Total Operating Cost

Before you can measure anything, you need to know what you’re working with. Add up all expected overhead expenses that do NOT include your programming, including:

Venue rental

Props (Tables, pipe and drape, chairs, electrical, etc)

Staff/volunteer support (Payroll)

A/V and tech

Security 

Insurance

Printing (Badges, signs, banners, etc)

Marketing and admin overhead (website costs, social media, other event advertising)

This is your total overhead cost of the event BEFORE you add programming.

This gives you a baseline to figure out what your budget for programming is going to be. If you already have a war chest from past events, even better. If you are just starting out (this is your first event) you will need to start from scratch and consider the cost.

So, Con Chair…Let’s plug some numbers for RandomCon:

Venue Rental: Hotel with banquet center. They include rooms for staff, but there is an additional cost for guests. – 16,500.00

Props: Owned, tables, chairs, pipe and drap rental – 3,500.00

Staff / Volunteer support (Payroll, uniforms, etc) – board payroll plus cost of uniforms for show – 5,000.00

A/V and tech: Contract Staff photographer/videographer, Board member is an IT person, sound and video equipment rental– 3,500.00

Security/EMT: Contract security company, Contract medic company – 2,500.00 per day – 7,500.00

Insurance: Standard event liability insurance with indemnity for the weekend– 3,000.00

Printing (Badges, signs, banners, etc) – you read THIS BLOG and have a print sponsor that gives you a discount, but you need new banners and a few new signs along with new badges for the show. 5,000.00 

Marketing and Admin Overhead (Website costs, social media, other advertising): The website admin is part of the board, and offers a discount. You decided to do a billboard to advertise, and you hired a professional social media admin / discord mod. – 5,000.00

Your Baseline show cost: 43,000.00. 

Before you start hitting the eject button…Don’t lose your mind yet. This is a baseline. You have plenty of opportunities to cover a lot of these costs with sponsorships, partnerships, and “I got a guy” Discounts/freebies. This isn’t a blog for line items or getting hookups. This number will go down once you start building partnerships and start finding freebies.

Step 2: Estimate Attendee Count Conservatively

This is where you want to set your attendee goals for the event. Although each piece of programming is going to have an established estimate of attendees that will attend because of the associated programming, you still need to know how many people ideally you want to attend.

So, how many attendees do you want at your event? Be conservative; you would rather shatter your goal than completely miss the target. Use past data, current pre-reg numbers, and honest trends. Look at events in your region; what are they bringing in, and why? Don’t inflate to feel good; be realistic. If you overshoot, you’ll overspend. Once you have your attendee goal, continue below.

Start by dividing your total cost by the estimated attendance to get a cost-per-attendee baseline. You will need this in the later steps. 

Step 3: Categorize Programming by Reach

This is where you can start saying “wouldn’t it be cool if…”. Brainstorm away but always consider how many attendees you believe will attend because of this piece of programming.

Start by mapping out your proposed programming offerings:

Main stage events 

Panels and workshops

Celebrity guests

Vendors & artist guests / whales

Cosplay Contests

Gaming

Scavenger Hunts / Badge ribbon games

After-hours programming (Rave, masquerade party, music performance)

Once you have a solid list of programming ideas, move on to step four…

Step 4: Attach Value to Impact

This is where things can start to become daunting. You need to begin asking yourself (and in some cases, the person proposing the programming idea) 

-How many attendees is this specific part of programming going to bring to the show? 

-How many people are going to buy a badge to see this specific aspect of the programming?

You need to be conservative with this number – ask other shows, guest agents, stalk social media, ask your attendees “what do YOU want?” or anonymously ask in the deeper reaches of Discord or Reddit. After researching (or having someone else research it) come up with an estimate that directly affects your barometer. This math isn’t just about dollars—it’s about impact efficiency. The amount of people that attend your event BECAUSE this guest is going to be at your show.

Step 5: Adjust the Plan Based on the Numbers

Once you’ve mapped out your “attendee cost” per part of programming, start prioritizing. Cut or scale back expensive, low-reach ideas. Invest more in high-impact, high-reach programming that’s cost-effective and makes attendees want to come back—or bring friends. Make sure you stick to one or two per subject – Bringing in the cast of a popular anime, movie or video game? Smart. Bringing in a dozen different actors that have nothing in common? They’re going to be fighting over each other for the same attendees. Stick with few duplicates in your programming. Once you can justify the attendee cost, double down the next year with the same proposition.

To track and compare these decisions, build a simple spreadsheet where each row is a programming element (like “Masquerade Contest” or “Saturday night Concert”) and each column includes cost, estimated attendance, and cost-per-attendee (based on that attendance estimation). If you want to get fancy, add columns for how many people list that feature as a reason for attending (via surveys), or what percentage of your total programming budget it takes up. This becomes your programming dashboard—quickly showing which elements punch above their weight and which ones are just burning cash. It doesn’t need to be perfect—it just needs to be honest. 

Step 6: Post-Show audit.

Okay, the show’s over. You’ve got your spreadsheet of every piece of programming and its calculated attendee cost. Hopefully, you had a staff member or volunteer tracking actual attendance at each event, panel, contest, or gathering. Now it’s time to see what paid off—and what didn’t.

Not everything will flop, and not everything will be a smash hit. You’ll probably land somewhere in between—and that’s exactly what you want.

Now it’s time to ask the important questions:

Why did this one tank?

Why did this one bring the house down?

Was it timing? Topic? Marketing? Room placement? Competing events?

Make a space in your spreadsheet for post-show commentary. Treat it like a live journal entry from your programming team. What worked, what didn’t, and what you wish you’d done differently. These comments become pure gold the next time you plan. You’re not reinventing the wheel—you’re tuning the engine.

The Attendee Cost System gives you the ammo to justify every major choice. It’s not just internal. This is the kind of data that makes sponsors nod, board members back off, and vendors say “yeah, that’s worth our time.” You’re no longer pitching ideas with crossed fingers—you’re laying out proven results.

Now that you have the results…

…Don’t sit on them. Share the dashboard with your leads. Make it part of your post-con debrief. When everyone sees the numbers and the reasoning behind them… it builds trust and keeps future planning grounded; not just gut feelings.

The Attendee Cost System isn’t about restricting creativity; it’s about protecting it. It gives organizers the clarity to plan with intention, the data to make smart decisions, and the confidence to justify every dollar spent. By breaking down what each part of your convention truly costs (and what it delivers) you stop operating on guesswork and start building and scaling with purpose. This system turns budgeting into a tool for empowerment, not limitation. 

It helps you focus on what matters, cut what doesn’t, and evolve year after year based on real-world results. In a world where venues are more expensive, competition is tighter, and attendees expect more for their money, the cons that will survive aren’t the ones that “feel” the best—they’re the ones that plan the smartest. Passion may light the fire, but structure keeps it burning. 

Want More Help?

Need help making the Attendee Cost System work for your event? 

Whether you’re launching your first con or trying to breathe new life into a legacy show, you don’t have to figure it out alone. This system wasn’t dreamed up by a marketing team—it was battle-tested by fans in the field, built by people who bleed for this culture.

At The Random Cosplayer, we work with organizers who refuse to play it safe, who aren’t interested in selling out, burning out, or watching their show become another soulless stop on the corporate circuit. You’ve got heart—we’ve got the strategy to match.

We’ll help you break down your budget without losing your mind, identify the programming that actually moves people (and ticket sales), and align every dollar with what your community actually values. This isn’t survival mode. This is your blueprint to create a con that’s sustainable, unforgettable, and undeniably yours.

Let the big cons have their branding. You? You get to build Legacy.

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